Creating a synthetic long exposure version of an image captured with a particular exposure length may involve applying a digital or analog gain to at least some pixels of image. In this way, an image of a low-light scene can be brightened so that, in some cases, details of the scene are more easily visible. While such a synthetic long exposure image can be displayed on a viewfinder of an image capture device, the displayed image might not accurately represent what would result if a true long exposure image were captured. For instance, if there is motion in the scene, this motion may appear with blurs or streaks in the true long exposure image, but the motion will likely be less blurry and/or less streaky in the synthetic long exposure image. As a consequence, a user could become frustrated by the image capture device not accurately representing actual captured long exposure images on its viewfinder.